


have you seen her, have you heard?

by mimizans



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 18:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimizans/pseuds/mimizans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for a prompt at the avengers comment ficathon. "clint/natasha; i never met a more impossible girl."</p>
            </blockquote>





	have you seen her, have you heard?

After the battle, and after the schwarma, and after the debrief, Clint and Natasha go to a bar.

It’s dimly lit, like all good dives are, and smells of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Clint quit two years ago, when he and Natasha were stuck in Malaysia for a month, with no ticket out and no convenience stores. Clint’s hand was forced, but he didn’t pick up the habit again when they finally got back to the States, dirtier and meaner than when they left. Natasha had asked him not to. It reminded her too much of the past, she said, of shadowy men whose faces she can’t remember, but of whose brutal hands she can still feel every inch. Natasha had asked, and Clint had complied. The smoke makes him nostalgic, though, and Natasha nudges him knowingly.

They sit close together on rickety stools and nurse their beers. Clint’s drinking a dark ale, heavy and thick on his tongue. Natasha asks the bartender for something spicy and bitter, because she was weaned on Zhigulevskoye. 

They’re quiet for a long time, sipping their drinks and inhaling burnt tobacco. Natasha keeps glancing at Clint, her eyes as dark as he’s ever seen them, but she doesn’t say a word. He knows she’s waiting for him, but he doesn’t know what to say. It’s not everyday you save the world from annihilation at the hands of an invading extradimensional army, and Clint has barely caught his breath. She’s asking him a question with every moment of silence. Clint knows the answer she wants to hear, but isn’t sure he’s ready to give it. 

Natasha finishes her beer and looks at him, her gaze pinning him to his seat. “What are we going to do, Clint?”

He sighs. “I don’t know, Tasha. I don’t know what any of this means.”

Natasha smiles at the grimy surface of the bar, at her hands pressed against it, at her blood red nails, and Clint knows that he has already lost this battle. Natasha’s will is iron; hesitation and doubt were beaten out of her before she was ten years old. She does everything with her whole heart and every inch of her body, whether it be loving or killing or fucking. 

Natasha has no off switch; she is on, every minute of every day. Every piece of her is a weapon, from her pinky finger to her darkest fears, and she uses those weapons whenever she has to. When Natasha Romanova wants something, she gets it, and what she wants now is reassurance that she is made of something other than shadow; that she can make people bleed for good instead of evil; that it’s possible to defy her destiny. Clint doesn’t believe in destiny, but he believes in her. 

Her convictions have become Clint’s, their lives so inextricably linked that he can’t remember what it was like before she was at his side. She is asking him to do something, for her, for them, and he will say yes. There is no way off the merry-go-round, but Clint wouldn’t want it any other way.

Natasha pushes away her empty mug and curls her hands into fists. “I know what it means.” 

She reaches across the bar and threads her fingers through Clint’s. “It means,” she says, turning her razorblade smile on him, “that we get to be heroes.”


End file.
